Black-Led Minnesota Anti-Woke Group Denounces Critical Race Theory

Kendall A. Qualls
Facebook/Kendall A. Qualls
Dr. Susan Berry

A black-led anti-woke group has denounced the “underlying premise of Critical Race Theory” (CRT) and said it plans “to educate the public” about the theory’s origins and its “harmful effects on students.”

Minnesota-based TakeCharge, led by President Kendall Qualls, released a statement, sent to Breitbart News, following the news U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has directed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose CRT in K-12 schools:

We at TakeCharge, continue to support the idea that the promise of America is obtainable by any citizen regardless of race or social standing. We are quite aware of past racial and demeaning policies that were sanctioned in the past. We also realize that racist people reside in the country. However, that does not mean that the country suffers from systemic racism – the United States today, is not the same country of 50 years ago. Today, children of color have vastly more opportunities to succeed in life than their parents and grandparents. Our goal is to help them achieve an independent and abundant life, free from government subsidies.

“We fully denounce the underlying premise of Critical Race Theory,” TakeCharge added, noting it does not “endorse, support or promote threatening comments of behavior to people with opposing views,” and intends to continue to promote its philosophy “peacefully and encourage others to follow our example.”

Minnesota parent, attorney, and TakeCharge volunteer Kofi Montzka, seen in the video below, spoke out against CRT and Black Lives Matter (BLM) during a meeting of her local school board in September:

“I’m here to ask the district to stop promoting Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter,” she said at the meeting. “People who support CRT say people like me and people who are against CRT are racist. That’s their only defense, yet CRT is racist.”

The mother of three children continued:

[CRT] tells kids of color like my children that they will never be able to make it, and white kids they are inherently racist. When I was a little kid I had reoccurring dreams about the KKK, when I was seven years old, and now people who look like this [displays photo of white child] are being told they’re racist in this school, and it is absolutely appalling.

And you might say … we don’t have CRT, we don’t have CRT in this school! I see it every day! My kid said they’re already started with it. He’s already miserable about having to start school.

Montzka discussed the negative effects of CRT on her son:

Last year, you gave my kid an assignment to read an article out of Scholastica Kids, entitled “Making Our Voices Heard,” that told him he would face racism in every facet of his life from education to the workplace to health care. He showed me this article because he found it very discouraging.

In the middle school, after George Floyd’s killing, they sent out an email, and they actually segregated kids by race to talk about it, in the email it said we will have a group for whites, for blacks, for Asians, for Hispanics. I couldn’t even believe it – that we’re going back to segregation, after all we fought for. In middle school you segregated kids of color by having the kids of color stand up and the white kids stayed out, and you offered kids of color $10 to give away all their personal, private disciplinary information to an outside organization. And I’ve also heard from teachers here that you have a policy like Minneapolis that discourages teachers … from disciplining kids of color because … disciplining kids of color is a pipeline to prison. Well, I have to tell you something, not disciplining them is the pipeline to prison, telling them they don’t have to be accountable, that … they’re not like white people, who can behave, we have lesser standards, we don’t think they’re truly equal. I don’t think you think we’re equal and it’s appalling to me!

Montzka said CRT and BLM teach students blacks have no freedom:

Systematic racism does not exist. We used to have systematic racism: it was called slavery and segregation. And we fought alongside each other to end it. It doesn’t exist. BLM said they’re fighting for the liberty, the liberation of black people. We are free. Breaking news. We are free, thank God almighty, we are free at last. This movement makes black people delusional. It blames white people for all our problems, when everybody knows they’re not. Our successes belong to us, as do our challenges, and the wonderful thing is we can do better for ourselves. We don’t have to sit around and wait for some white savior to come around and help us. And I wish Roseville schools gave that message. It seems like I don’t think you will, though, because you guys love it, you white people love that you need black people to be victims to cleanse yourselves of your unjustified white guilt. Well, do it some other way. Get a friend, get a therapist, don’t use my kids.

Montzka observed that, had she been exposed to CRT as a child, it is likely she would never have been motivated to become a lawyer:

I hope … my kids find your racist messages unbelievable, because they see me, their mom, who was raised by a drug addict and suffered abuse as a child, become a lawyer. If I was inundated with these ideas, I don’t know where I’d be today.

Garland’s memorandum arrived in response to a letter to President Joe Biden from the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which asked the president to issue an executive order to protect school officials and school board members from frustrated parents expressing their anger over the teaching of CRT in their children’s schools, and mask mandates as well.

NSBA asked Biden to use the PATRIOT Act to identify anti-CRT parents as “domestic terrorists.”

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